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Why I Use Analytics From Google

11 December, 2007 (18:35) | Google, Increasing Traffic, Statistics | By: clive

By Andrew Grant

If you think of Google as only useful for search and for emtying your wallet via your Adwords account; think again. One of it?s most useful services is completely free and very powerful.. Analytics is a no-charge, website tracking system that will give you incredible insight into the visitors to your site and how they use it.

OK, maybe you didn?t know it existed. Well you will find it at http://www.google.com/analytics or if you already have a Google Adwords account, take a look at the tabs at the top of your screen and you?ll see that you can access Analytics there too. Why not visit Analytics and sign up for your free account.

Setting it up is pretty easy. There are two bits of code which Analytics will generate automatically for you. One is the tracker code, which simply needs to be copied and pasted to the pages of your website. Some webmasters only put the code on their main pages, but I?d recommend putting it on every single page ? that way your stats will be much more in depth.

The other code is for Conversion tracking, which I?ll cover in a minute.

So now you have it set up, let me tell you the three reason why I absolutely love Analytics.

Reason #1 ? it?s incredibly comprehensive. Analytics will tell you how many visitors came to your site, how long they stayed, what pages they looked at, which site they came from, what kind of browser they had, what country they live in and whether they have been before.

It will tell you which keywords, campaigns and ad versions brought them here. It will tell you how long they stayed on each page, which page they looked at before and which one they went to next. It will tell you which page they came in on and which one they left from. You can look at the site as a whole, or each individual page and you can analyse whole months or just a single day.

In fact, at times there is almost too much data, so I tend to focus on my key metrics. Number of unique visitors, top pages and most importantly the traffic source. For example I know exactly how many visitors are brought in by my pay-per-click campaign and how many come from my article writing efforts. This is powerful because it allows me to directly measure my free of charge traffic building activity against my paid advertising.

Reason #2 ? Conversion tracking. The second piece of code that Analytics will generate is a conversion tracker. This is copied and pasted to whichever page or pages in your site mean that you have a made a sale. I use it for my newsletter sign-ups, by putting the code on the Thank you page.

Once a vistor arrives there, Analytics will record the visit and allow me to cross reference against other statistics.

For example, I know that visitors who find my site in a standard web search and click on the link, are almost twice as likely to sign up for the newsletter as those who come from an Adwords ad. So, you can see why free traffic is so valuable. Not only does it cost nothing but it is better quality too.

Reason #3 – Last but by no means least, Analytics lets me test and tweak to my heart?s content. Having such comprehensive data at my fingertips, means that I can see the effect of any change to my site, the very next day.

If I change my home page, I can soon see the effect on my conversions and watch whether visitors now navigate down a different route. I can see if they spend more, or less time reading my new content and I can see what it makes them do afterwards.

No matter what tweaks I make, the results are rapidly available to me and if things go wrong and traffic or conversions fall, I can see immediately what needs to be done.

Back to my original question. If you?re not using Google Analytics on your site. Why Not?

Hi my name is Andrew Grant, I’d like to invite you to visit my website and subscribe to my newsletter for more information and inspiration on Internet Marketing, Goal Setting and Positive Thinking. http://www.money-and-mind.com

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Use Web Stats To Dramatically Boost Your Profits

8 December, 2007 (10:40) | Increasing Traffic, Statistics | By: clive

Use Web Stats To Dramatically Boost Your Profits

by Ba Kiwanuka

If you are not currently using web stats to monitor activity on your website or blog, then you are hurting your online business. In case you are not sure what web stats are here's a brief explanation:

Web stats are statistics that show you the behavioral patterns and activities of visitors to your site. The following is a list of some of the more common web stat parameters:

1. How the visitors get to your site (i.e., referral URL) 2. Which pages they visit on your site 3. How long they stay on your site 4. How many unique visits to your website 5. How many times a person visits (revisits) your site 6. How many people bookmark your website 7. Which countries your website visitors hail from 8. The keywords or phrases used to locate your site 9. How many visitors your site gets per day or per month 10. Traffic volume to your site broken down per hour/per day 11. How much traffic each search engine refers.

As you can imagine having access to the above parameters is a very powerful marketing tool indeed. That said, understanding the theory is all good and well, but knowing the real life application as concerns your online business is the end goal, right?

INTERPRETING WEB STATS

If you know how your visitors get to your site then you are in a good position to fine tune your promotional campaigns. Think about it a moment, let's say you are spending $$$ amount on various advertising campaigns, unless you know precisely which campaign is producing what results you cannot possibly know which campaigns are effective and which ones are duds!

In other words by being able to track where your internet traffic comes from, you can focus on those areas that are working and stop wasting time and resources on those that aren't.

Consider the issue of keywords; let's assume that you are optimizing your web site for a number of targeted keywords wouldn't it be much better if you knew which keywords words were effective and which ones weren't?

For example you might be under the misimpression that a very popular, much searched for keyword you'd spent a lot of time and effort optimizing for, is responsible for sending most of the traffic to your site.

But what if your site actually ranks poorly for that keyword, and that really you are getting next to no traffic from it at all and that in fact your traffic was coming from a far less popular keyword. You'd never be aware of this unless you had web stats at your disposal!

Good web stat scripts also inform you which search engine is sending you what amount of traffic. Imagine a scenario where you spend a significant amount of time optimizing your website for a particular search engine because you are under the impression that so-and-so search engine is responsible for sending you the greater portion of your traffic.

But what if you're wrong!

What if in fact it is another search engine altogether that is sending all that traffic to your site, you'd be none the wiser unless you had web stats to apprise you of the situation.

HOW WEB STATS CAN IMPROVE YOUR SEO

The most profitable websites on the internet are the ones that have the most traffic. The reason why they have the most traffic is because they are extremely popular. And guess what? Those sites are popular because they are evidently giving their visitors something they find useful. Useful enough that they keep returning, even bookmark the site, and spend a significant length of time perusing it.

The more time people spend on your web site the stickier your site or blog is said to be. The stickier a site is the better because not only does that register well with the search engines it means that you are offering something valuable to your visitors (e.g., useful info.). As far as seo strategies go, a stickier site is more likely to advance up the SERPs (search engine results pages) as well as more likely to get promoted page-rank wise.

Most web stat scripts can notify you of the sticky status of your site by supplying you with data showing how much time people spend on your site as well as how many of them bookmark your site (add to favorites).

Another added incentive to having a sticky site is that all that useful information translates into increased credibility, expertise and trust for you from your visitors, which ultimately makes it easier for you to get them to execute your most desired action on your site, be it to purchase something, sign up or fill out a form.

MONETIZING MISDIRECTED HITS

Sometimes when someone clicks on a link within your website or an external link pointing to your site they do not land on the requested web page but instead are directed to an error page or what is commonly referred to as a 404 page. Web stats are able to tell you how many times this happens. If it happens often enough why not customize your error pages with a message, one-time-offers or at least something that enables you to profit from those otherwise lost hits.

In summation, this article has barely scratched the surface of how useful web stats are. If however you're currently operating your internet business without them and you wish to remedy the situation, you can get premium quality free web stat scripts from:

1. http://awstats.sourceforge.net

2. www.statcounter.com

More Internet Marketing Strategy Tips

Article Source: High Quality RSS Feeds and Articles on 350+ Topics

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Increase your business turnover with a blog.

6 December, 2007 (16:20) | Advertising, Blogging, Wordpress | By: clive




Why Blogging Is The Next Great Internet Business Opportunity

by Pasi Kaarakainen
Are you looking for some inside information on blogging and using for an internet business? Here's an up-to-date report from business experts who should know.

A blog is for short a web log that you post online similar to a web page. As long as you work at keeping it updated search engines love them and you can attract a group of regular visitors as well.

Blogging is a great way to build an internet business, but you need to know a few of the tips that make them a great opportunity first.

1.Blogs are not expensive to start. Blogger.com is owned by Google and you can set up a free one with them. They are so easy to keep up that if you can type you can blog. If you have ever tried to build web pages you will love to blog.

2. Many businesses are now starting to use blogs instead of websites. This makes good sense for new businesses who do not have an online presence yet. Even if you decide to hire a blog builder to get you set up you are looking at less than $50 including hosting. Try and get a website built for that.

3. You should know that they are not very technical to set up or use. Even experienced website builders love to blog because of how easy they are to operate. The software is in place. You can either host it yourself or let the blogging platform be hosted for you at places like Blogger or WordPress.

4. A new phrase to come up recently is Web 2.0. This is really where a blog shines. Web 2.0 is anything that let's your visitors get involved in adding content to your website or blog. Adding comments, voting in a poll, or even writing for you is all very easily accomplished on your blog.

Plus when you comment back you begin to build relationships with your visitors which brings them back over and over. Your goal is to keep it current with what is going on in your business.

Relating your knowledge in the way of fresh content can give you a real advantage with your visitors and with the search engines.

6. Blogging makes it easy to share news, photos, upcoming events, and more things you want people to know about your services and your products. If you are a creative person you can really use this to your advantage.

7. Blogging offers many great advertising advantages as well. This really comes in the form of social bookmarking your blog posts to various online directories such as Digg and Yahoo.

Because people are more involved on the internet in these various social directories you can make new friends, customers, and future business partners.

8. One added benefit is that search engines love social directories. If you blog on a consistent basis you will get them visiting your blog more often and ranking you higher for popular keywords in your blog articles.

Using a blog makes perfect sense for an internet business as well as an offline one. Hopefully your goal is to build a customer base and keep in touch with them in the future and not just when you make one sale. Blogging can be a great way to do that.

Email marketing has lost some of it's lusture and you can use an RSS feed to let people know by email you have a new blog post to read. If you use an autoresponder you can send your list a message about a new product special you might be offering.

Starting an internet business opportunity and using a blog for it is a great idea. Having a blog for an exisitng business is smart as well. Regardless of how you use it you just need to get one.

Create massive multiple streams of income using "Plug In Profit Site" system - http://www.WealthatHomer.com/pips.html - Visit Pasi Kaarakainen's website to find tons of other great legitimate Internet home based business tools and opportunities.

Article Source: Free High-Quality Article Directory at Article Crux
Create massive multiple streams of income using "Plug In Profit Site" system - http://www.WealthatHomer.com/pips.html - Visit Pasi Kaarakainen's website to find tons of other great legitimate Internet home based business tools and opportunities.

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